drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar and vocal - mike fredrickson
electric guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
keyboards - chris neville

Found not to be the biggest object in its neighborhood, poor little Pluto was cast off in 2006 and made into a "dwarf planet." Sentimental pop-song treatments of astronomical news are all too rare, and rarer still is any conceivable use for the "Tuvan monk" patch on Chris Neville's computer keyboard, so please treasure this song.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
electric and acoustic guitars and vocal - robbie fulks
organ - scott ligon
backing vocals - steve dawson and ingrid graudins

A young man sets out on an impulsive drive from his home in the metropolitan New York area to Chicago to kidnap his ex-girlfriend from her now-boyfriend, preferably with her consent; and a minor pop classic comes kicking and screaming (or maybe pulsing and keening) into our fallen world.

acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie gjersoe
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks

One of the best of the fifty, in my opinion, in terms of overall effect of the recorded performance. I frequently seem to find myself headed to the airport in Houston or Dallas at 6PM Sunday morning, bleary and a little melancholy, and I guess that's why I put this sad fellow in that place.

drumkit - gerald dowd
electric guitar, bass, keyboards - scott ligon
electric guitar solo - grant tye
vocal, acoustic guitar, Casio samples - robbie fulks
backing vocals - k.c. mcdonough

A lot of pretty obvious reference points here, but see if you can spot the Paul Young semi-quote. This was nothing but fun from first draft to last mix, and who knew it would turn out this well.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - k.c. mcdonough
electric guitar and piano - scott ligon
baritone guitar and vocal - robbie fulks

My son and father-in-law were teamed for the twelfth season of the CBS series "The Amazing Race," in which contestants dash around the planet finding clues and taking on challenges until the last one left standing is awarded a million bucks. This Carl Perkins-y thing refers breezily to their teammates and experiences as if everyone in the world knows what the hell I'm discussing...just smile and play along.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
organ - scott ligon
acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
banjo - danny barnes
backing vocals - steve dawson and ingrid graudins

The Tim McGraw-Nelly duet was a model for something that, if only on grounds of musical curiosity, should be happening more -- a dedicated tilling of the common land shared by the blackest of the black music and the whitest of the white. The plot might've been wider in the Ray Charles days, back when the integration thing was in. Keith Gattis's use of the banjo in a world-weary soft-rock groove made me think of using it here. The backing by Steve Dawson and Ingrid Graudins is very good, and in some ways the karaoke version that engineer O'Rourke made me, erasing me and lifting them, is the better one.

bass fiddle - john abbey
vocal and acoustic guitar - robbie fulks
vocal - kelly hogan
fiddle - don stiernberg

A fellow in New York was putting together a record to benefit Iraq war veterans, and I contributed this song, which I learned from the recording by Loretta Lynn and Ernest Tubb. From what I've gathered, most of the songs turned in were compassionate or subtly pacifistic, but this one, being a country song, is understated and pragmatic. I actually approve of this guitar picking -- for once I don't sound like I'm putting everything I have into it.

bass guitar - john abbey
vocal and guitar - robbie fulks
ukulele - robbie gjersoe
accordion - john williams

When I write barroom songs I'm usually picturing a place like Lee's Liquor Lounge or Marie's Riptide: an old man's bar. In fact I think there are two kinds of bars -- old man bars, and old man bars thinly disguised as something more upbeat. Though country rounder songs are full of drunks swimming in harsh self-examination, I find that in life they are a little like office-workers or political radicals, smothering doubt and downheartedness with compulsory team spirit.

drumkit, turntable and vocal - gerald dowd
bass guitar and vocal - lorne rall
electric guitar and vocal - grant tye
piano, organ, and vocal - joe terry
clavinet - pat brennan
vocal - robbie fulks

This J5 cover is one of my favorites from my rumored Michael Jackson tribute album (circa 2000). Dig Lorne Rall as Marlon!

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - mike fredrickson
electric guitar - grant tye
vocal, electric guitar, keyboard - robbie fulks
backing vocals - k.c. mcdonough, ingrid graudins

We in the arts run now and then into people who can't seem to deal normally with us, once they discover our profession. It's hard to tell where admiration shades into contempt. If I am noticing this, down at my level, it must be like immersion in an acid bath for the truly star-spangled. I adopt in this song the voice of the aggrieved non-arts worker and TV watcher (left behind to nurse his wounds in South Bend) not to understand him better, but to kick him.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
electric guitar (first solo) and piano - scott ligon
electric guitar (second solo), vocal, and backing vocals - robbie fulks

This one evolved from a high-school career day talk I gave in 2006, also memorialized as an essay in the country-troubadour prose collection "A Guitar and A Pen." The piano riffs are as scattered and infrequent as they are because Scott was high that night and not really feeling it, continuously. I like both our guitar solos.

drumkit - gerald dowd
bass guitar - john abbey
electric guitar and fiddle - john rice
vocal and acoustic guitar - robbie fulks
steel guitar - brian wilkie

More on the tragically irrevocable past; in this song, the narrator's success in life has necessarily alienated him from his upbringing and driven a wedge between his kids' values and his own. A few of the details, like the goat, are cribbed from life, but most of them are imaginary or highly embellished.

acoustic guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
vocal - kelly hogan
mandolin - don stiernberg
bass fiddle - john abbey

This is the country curmudgeon song where Kelly felt compelled to "stroke the ladybeard" whilst singing.

suitcase - gerald dowd
archtop guitar and vocal - robbie fulks
organ - scott ligon

High-fidelity note: To listen to this properly, put your hands side by side on alternating sides of your head and flutter spasmodically.